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ROOSEVELT 

THE MORALIST IN ACTION 



Memorial Address 



GEORGE HENRY PAYNE 

Commissioner of Taxes and Assessments, City of New York; 

President Eastern and Middle West Travelers' 

Association 



ST. JAMES' EPISCOPAL CHURCH 

NEW YORK CITY 
FEBRUARY 9, 1919 



PUBLISHED BY 

Eastern and Middle West Travelers' Association 

47 WEST 34th STREET, NEW YORK CITY 



U 



ROOSEVELT 

THE MORALIST IN ACTION 



Memorial Address 



GEORGE HENRY PAYNE 

Commissioner of Taxes and Assessments, City of New York; 

President Eastern and Middle West Travelers' 

Association 



ST. JAMES' EPISCOPAL CHURCH 

NEW YORK CITY 



FEBRUARY 9, 1919 



PUBLISHED BY 

Eastern and Middle West Travelers' Association 

47 WEST 34th STREET, NEW YORK CITY 






i . ansterred from 
Ontfjm«nt Division 



ROOSEVELT 
THE MORALIST IN ACTION 



The end of all moral speculation is to teach us our duty; 
and by proper representation of the deformity of vice and 
beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us 
to avoid the one and embrace the other. But is this ever to be 
expected from inferences and conclusions of the understanding 
which of themselves have no hold of the affections, nor set in 
motion the active powers of men? They discover truths, but 
where the truths which they discover are indifferent, and beget 
no desire or aversion, they can have no influence on conduct 
or behavior. What is honorable, what is fair, what is becoming, 
what is noble, what is generous, takes possession of the heart, 
and animates us to embrace and maintain it. What is intel- 
ligible, what is evident, what is probable, what is true, pro- 
cures only the cool assent of the understanding; and gratifying 
speculative curiosity puts an end to our researches. 

Hume, "Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals." 



I have chosen to-day to speak of Theodore Roosevelt 
the moralist, and I have so chosen because all that I have 
seen of the man, as I understood him, was inseparable from 
the moralist. Even in the midst of a bitter campaign when 
the political furies seemed to be let loose, and when in his 
answer to attacks and in his own attacks, he was showing 
an energy and dialectic skill, a physical energy and courage 
that we do not associate with those interested humanly in 
the fundamental things of life; even then, to me the most 
absorbing side, the side I was not able to forget, was the 
moralist. 



We could speak of Roosevelt the wit, for he had a 
delightful wit. We could speak of Roosevelt the statesman, 
and to-day throughout the breadth of this land he will be so 
discussed, and history will record gratefully his achieve- 
ments in that field. We could speak of Roosevelt the 
soldier, and it is a thrilling thing to think that he never 
flinched in any fight that he was in, and his last noble 
ambition was to die on the battlefield for his country. We 
can speak of Roosevelt the naturalist and the traveller, but 
these are phases that may more properly be dealt with by 
specialists. We could speak of him as an author, as a 
scholar. But if he had any mission in life, as he surely had, 
it was to make those who came in contact with him see 
things deeply, to see things in their larger significance ; as 
for myself I believe we are following more in his footsteps if 
we try to see the deeper significance of his own life. 

When we speak of moralists, we of to-day are a little 
apt to confuse them with the metaphysical philosophers, with 
the great intellects of the past two or three hundred years 
who have dominated the purely intellectual world. We are 
also apt to follow the French definition of the moralist and 
regard the word as descriptive of a genre of writing, as 
exemplified by La Rochefoucald. 

But it is not the Adam Smith, the Kant, or the Descartes 
type of moralist that I have in mind when I speak of Roose- 
velt, nor yet the Ghamfort, La Bruyere moralizer, it is the 
moralist who was also a man of action, the St. Augustine, 
the Franklin, the Emerson type, the man of large vision 
who not only urged the proper and lofty life, but who en- 
deavored to make his own life an example of his philosophy; 
who endeavored to move men not only by what he preached, 
but by visualizing for them the benefits of his precepts. 



It is not easy to attain the historical perspective. A for- 
gotten American author, Horace Binney Wallace, once de- 
clared that "Foreign opinion was a sort of contemporaneous 
posterity." Foreign opinion of Roosevelt, when the present 
great crisis in the history of the world has passed, will be, 
I think, that he was interested in not only the problems of 
to-day, but more than anything else in the problems of the 
future; and in the conduct of the American public, not only 
as it affected themselves, but as it influenced the entire 
world — that was his absorbing thought. 

He was a devoted, a vigorous, and a continuously com- 
batant exponent of Americanism. It was not that he wished 
his nation to have selfish advantages over other nations and 
other peoples. It was because he felt that only through the 
upbuilding of the great American ideal, the world would be 
bettered. In a day when sham intellectuality was turning 
toward the silly dream of internationalism, when Anarchistic 
elements were endeavoring to undermine the great Christian 
idea of democracy ; he was the rugged exponent of American 
traditions, not that he wished her to triumph alone in ma- 
terial ways, but that America safe, prosperous, proud and 
vigilant, would be, as it has been in the past, the land of 
ideals among nations, and the haven of the oppressed among 
peoples. 

As a man he typified all that he believed, and it was 
interesting to one who had a great opportunity to listen to 
his analysis of himself to realize that no matter what the 
penalty or privation was, no matter how great the sacrifice, 
or how great the concentration necessary, he neglected 
nothing that might prepare him for good citizenship. 

It was in the late summer of 1910 that I first came to 
know Colonel Roosevelt, shortly after his return from 
Africa. He had been President of the United States and 



had left that high office with prestige such as few of our 
Presidents had enjoyed; it was, indeed, partly because of 
his feeling that his presence in the country might be em- 
barrassing to his successor that he had undertaken the long 
and interesting exploration trip from which he had just 
returned. The State of New York, as you may recall, had 
just suffered an awful shock in the revelations that attended 
the Allds trial during which it was discovered that men 
high in the councils of the Republican party had been 
guilty of the most brazen corruption. That the corruption 
was not general it was true, but that the moral tone of the 
party was low was equally true, and men who ordinarily 
take little interest in politics felt that unless there was a 
change in the management and an improvement in the tone, 
the great party would have little right to expect public 
support. 

Men were urging Colonel Roosevelt to take a hand in 
the State contest for the control of the party and at a time 
when he was known to be reluctant to do so I travelled to 
Oyster Bay as the correspondent for a New York paper, 
with the keen interest of one of the younger generation of 
his party who felt the disgrace that the party was under- 
going. I shall never forget that interview. I presented my 
letter with some diffidence, I might say timidity, for he was 
a world character, his eight years as President had separated 
him from New York and New Yorkers and I felt very 
humble in the presence of the great man. I expected to 
stay perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, I stayed nearly two 
hours, and when I came out it was the feeling of one who 
had walked in high places. 

Instead of the aloofness and the reserve that I had 
expected, I was warmed and thrilled by the simplicity of the 
man who was apparently anxious to make himself under- 



stood to a younger and unknown man. He had been Presi- 
dent, he explained, in a simple, homely way, and he believed 
that what influence he had with the people would be lessened 
if he entered into a contest in which there were good men 
on both sides, though the one group represented reactionary 
ideas and had allowed evils to grow up. He pointed out 
what was very true, that in almost every State in the Union 
he was being called on to say something about local con- 
tests, and that the moment he involved himself in the New 
York contest his enemies would declare that he had political 
ambitions and that his activity was due to self seeking. 

It was a great quality of Roosevelt that he placed 
younger men at ease, and his own warmth invectious, I soon 
found myself in an argument with the man whom I had been 
led to believe intolerant of all opposition. 

"But," I said, "is it not your duty to do this even if you 
are to be misunderstood?" and I remember the whimsical 
smile with which he remarked that if he were sure it was 
his duty the fear of being misunderstood was not going to 
stand in his way. And it was a disagreeable duty, for he 
finally entered the lists as the candidate for the temporary 
chairmanship of the Republican State convention, a fight, 
as he said himself, for the opportunity to make a speech, 
when he spent much of his time in those days refusing invi- 
tations to make speeches. But he went through to the bitter 
end, misunderstood and abused a good deal for not being 
content with having been President, and accused, if you will 
recall, of having terrible ambitions, among them of wanting 
to be king. 

This may seem to some purely a piece of forgotten and 
not particularly interesting political history, but I saw a 
great deal of him in that campaign, and I never could quite 
feel that his was solely a political activity. He had told me 



in that first interview at Oyster Bay that at any time I feit 
the necessity of calling on him I should feel free to come, 
and up to within two weeks of his death, when I saw him 
in Roosevelt Hospital, I never had the slightest difficulty in 
getting to him. I had in that first interview, knowing that 
he had been reluctant to discuss State politics with some 
who had called on him, apologized for asking some blunt 
question ; and he stated then that I need never hesitate about 
asking him a question, and he would always answer frankly. 
I should like to state here that this promise, too, was always 
kept. I say this because from that time on I enjoyed what 
were perhaps unusual privileges for a younger man, and 
had an insight into his motives, and, again I say, I never 
could see his actions in those political moves except in a 
moral light. 

Think how little there was, if anything, for him to gain 
by the disagreeable contest into which he entered. Surely 
not fame — he had left the Presidency with the reputation of 
being one of the greatest of Presidents. Political power — he 
risked all he had by merely taking part in what the rest of 
the country regarded as a local political squabble. I used 
to hear, in those days, people say that he had the "habit" 
of making speeches, that he had the "habit" of being in what 
they called the "limelight." As an ardent advocate and 
friend those criticisms annoyed me for a while, but I came 
to realize that it was difficult for people who had never 
known the joys of literary composition, who had never felt 
the exaltation that comes with scholarly pursuits to under- 
stand the Roosevelt home with its great libraryt and its 
beautiful domesticity, to appreciate what manner of man 
Roosevelt was at heart; and how impossible it was for the 
uninitiated to understand, as Milton phrased it, ihe scholar's 
"unwillingness to leave the quiet and still air of delightful 



studies to embark on a troubled sea of noises and harsh 
disputes." 

And yet there is a sanctification that comes in the 
solitude of the study, that leads those dwelling there to a 
high sense of duty, that makes them hesitate at neither 
pillory nor prison, nor death, when the martyrdom is put 
upon them. 

I have referred at length to this incident of 1910 because 
it led to the issues of 1912 which were so largely misunder- 
stood, and are misunderstood to-day, as far as he was con- 
cerned, and because it seems to me the keynote of that 
side of him that was most dominant, and has been least 
accented by both his friends and those opposed to him. I 
would not on this occasion or from this pulpit wish to plead 
any special cause, or to introduce the slightest political 
argument, but we must look, in fact it is our duty to look, 
for the moral issues that are sometimes involved in political 
matters as they are involved at times in every phase of 
life. 

John Morley says that politicians and statesmen have 
the habit of confusing one another and frequently them- 
selves because they frequently talk of one thing when they 
are thinking of another. It is a habit I fear that we are 
all prone to. We are especially prone to fall into that error 
when our passions are aroused. We frequently say that the 
other man is wrong when we mean that we don't agree with 
him. There is nothing morally wrong or right in believing 
in free trade or protection. It is a mere question of eco- 
nomic expediency. It is morally wrong, however, for us to 
advocate laws that will permit men to work for wages that 
will not permit them to live as human beings should live in 
a civilized community. There is nothing moral in the ques- 
tion of Municipal Ownership or of States Rights, or 



Budgetary Control, but in each and every one of those 
questions a moral issue may develop under particular cir- 
cumstances, if a human being is deprived of his opportunity 
to live as God's man, or if crime and corruption may be 
checked. 

There were no moral issues involved in the main in the 
contest of 1912, for there always will be an honest difference 
of opinion in this country among thoughtful men as to 
whether this country will be governed best by a representa- 
tive body of men, rather than by pure democracy. But the 
moral issue did become involved, when under the con- 
trolled or representative idea of government, the tendency 
developed to look more to the value of the property of 
the country than to its human beings. 

I rode with Theodore Roosevelt on the train from New 
York to Boston the day after he had decided to be a 
candidate for the Republican nomination and he was a 
very sad man. That was in February, 1912, and he said 
then: "I think we shall not win, but the fight must be 
made." I was enthusiastic over his proposed candidacy, 
the prospect of an exciting campaign and being near the 
great man during it was very alluring, and I hopefully 
declared that the people would rise and support him enthu- 
siastically. 

"It may be possible," he answered, "but we must be 
prepared to lose — it is our duty to make the fight," and he 
smiled whimsically to recall to me my own speech of a 
little more than a year before when I had pleaded with 
him to enter the New York State fight. 

I am well aware that in speaking of a man who was so 
often in the thick of the political discussion of his country, 
and who so often was the center of political debate, there 
will be those who will misunderstand this analysis of him 



as a moralist, and that is why I wish to emphasize the 
necessity of our differentiating between his political and 
economic views, and those in which ethical questions were 
involved. 

His moral attitude on public matters and with regard 
to his own political activity cannot be made more clear 
than he did himself on the night when he was shot in 
Milwaukee in 1912. 

You will recall that he was on his way to a meeting 
when an insane man pushed his way through the crowd, and 
standing a few feet from him shot him in the breast. The 
revolver was of the type used by cowmen in the Southwest, 
with a carriage of a larger calibre than the revolver itself, 
the purpose of this being to give added force to the bullet. 
The shot knocked him down, but he was on his feet in a 
moment, and when the infuriated crowd was about to beat 
the assailant into insensibility, he, the man who had just 
been shot, with a bullet in his breast, ordered them to desist 
and to bring the man nearer that he might see who he was. 

"I don't know him," he said, and then ordered the 
chauffeur to drive to the meeting place, although those in 
the automobile with him begged him to go to a hospital. 
When he arrived at the hall where he was to speak, he 
was bleeding profusely, and the doctors urged him not to 
attempt to speak, for the bullet had gone through his over- 
coat, a copy of his speech in the pocket of his undercoat, 
and had torn an ugly and ragged wound in his breast. 

He coughed once or twice intentionally to see if he was 
spitting blood. 

"It has not touched my lungs," he said, "I shall speak, 
it may be my last speech, but if it is my last speech it is 
my duty to protest against this very sort of thing with my 
last breath." 

11 



And he did speak, and without regard to the issues of 
that day, or the issues of any day that are purely political, 
he voiced his magnificent belief in the American sense of 
fair-play, in the American tradition of law and order, and 
the American principle of liberty and democracy. 

I have referred to his occasional analyses of himself. 
They were never forced and the two or three times that 
he indulged in analytical retrospection came at the end of 
an explanation or a defense of some matter in which he 
desired to be perfectly understood by the few intimates 
to whom he was talking. 

"I am just the average American," he said one day, 
"with the sympathies of the average American," and then 
he went on to explain that all that he had accomplished 
had been purely the result of hard work. 

I quoted back to him the statement of Darwin that 
"genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains," and he 
added "with sympathy." 

Never to those who knew him well did he take the 
aloof attitude, never did he assume that he was greater 
than, or superior to those with whom he differed. As 
the Latin poet said, "nothing human was alien to him," 
and in explaining his political success he declared that the 
things that had seemed to be most clever politically were 
the result of his indignation over a wrong condition, and his 
inability to tolerate an evil condition. 

It will be recalled that some years ago he sued a 
Western editor who had printed untruthful statements as 
to his personal habits in the matter of alcohol. I had not 
seen the article, and had heard very little about it, although 
I, like many other of his friends, was acquainted with the 
fact that those who did not like him were unscrupulous in 
their untruthful statements as to his habits. 



There never was a more temperate man in this country. 

I went down to Oyster Bay one day, and after we had 
discussed other things that were in the order of the day, he 
asked me if I had heard of or seen this attack accusing him 
of intemperance. I said I had not, and that I did not 
believe that it was worthy of his notice. 

"That might be," he said, "if it were not for the fact 
that day after day I am receiving letters like this one that 
I have in my hand, from mothers saying that they had 
taught their boys to look up to me, and that it was a shock 
to them to learn that I had been unfaithful to my trust. 
I owe them a refutation." 

And it was not because of his physical comfort, not 
because of any desire for political advantage that he went 
through that disagreeable trial, but because he wished to be 
true to those who regarded him, not as a political leader, 
but as a moral standard bearer. 

Though "he touched life at nearly every point at which 
it is possible for the human soul to put forth its tendrils 
into the universe," the main current of his thought, the pas- 
sionate desire of his life was for what was right, for what 
was fundamentally true. It was this that gave him his 
great energy and industry, it was this that made his interests 
so broad, that made him personally so sympathetic and so 
greatly beloved. Those who were able to look into his 
heart and those who knew him well found there nothing 
mysterious — they found a well of affection for humanity, 
and especially for his own countrymen, that changed their 
entire point of view and made them better and wiser. It 
was the faculty of seeing clearly, and the ability to express 
himself in simple exact English that made him so irritating 
to his opponents in a controversy. He was above all things 
else unselfish, the most perplexing characteristic of all, to 



those who did not know him and were opposed to him. I 
have gone to him in behalf of all kinds of people and for 
a variety of causes and I always found him sympathetic and 
interested, always willing to assist those whose cause was 
worthy of the slightest support. 

Much was written about his ambitious nature. His 
ambition was for his country. A month before he died we 
talked of his possible nomination for the Presidency in 
1920. "If the people want me I may be the candidate," he 
said, and when I stated my belief that his nomination was 
inevitable, he answered, "if it were to take place to-day that 
might be so, but we can not tell what will take place in 
the next two years." 

The American people have lost a great friend, a great 
leader — Great Heart indeed, has gone. To those to whom 
it was given to be near him and understand him there must 
be not so much the feeling of terrible loss as the feeling of 
great responsibility, for that was his way, nobly, beautifully 
his way, and his way shall be our way, as God gives us 
strength: but 

O! for the touch of the vanished hand 
And the sound of the voice that is still. 



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